Killing Freud

From a review of a forthcoming book, Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis by Todd Dufresne:
“Dufresne suggests that the upshot of Freud’s moribund triumph has been, intellectually, little short of catastrophic. Psychoanalysis subverts the essence of western rationality, substituting a bastard discourse for the fact-honouring conventions of dialogue that, intermittently, have served civilization well since Socrates. Rightly, Dufresne identifies the excesses of post-structuralism and postmodernism as Freud’s progeny, without wholly condemning all such movements. Yet his basic point rings true: wherever the bearded shadow of Freud falls, something unwholesome festers.”
This is precisely why, for all my suspicion and distrust of psychoanalysis (on grounds that have been worked through by Foucault, Deleuze, and others) I still consider it to be necessary, indeed indispensable.

From a review of a forthcoming book, Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis by Todd Dufresne:
“Dufresne suggests that the upshot of Freud’s moribund triumph has been, intellectually, little short of catastrophic. Psychoanalysis subverts the essence of western rationality, substituting a bastard discourse for the fact-honouring conventions of dialogue that, intermittently, have served civilization well since Socrates. Rightly, Dufresne identifies the excesses of post-structuralism and postmodernism as Freud’s progeny, without wholly condemning all such movements. Yet his basic point rings true: wherever the bearded shadow of Freud falls, something unwholesome festers.”
This is precisely why, for all my suspicion and distrust of psychoanalysis (on grounds that have been worked through by Foucault, Deleuze, and others) I still consider it to be necessary, indeed indispensable.